Well, personally I've been a caregiver--my mother, my brother, and my husband. I've also had to receive care when I was ill. It's a very stressful situation, extremely stressful. It also aggravates some of the illness problems. It's not good for your mental health as well.
Unfortunately, in this country we seem to take caregiving as something somebody will do--it doesn't matter who; they're off in the east or somewhere, but they'll come and look after it. And it's usually the women who leave their jobs to look after somebody, to look after their aging parents or their children who are ill, and there is no compensation for that. They have to leave their job and get no pay, which immediately cuts down on the family income, which immediately cuts down on the medication they can afford, and whether they can even live in the same place where they have been.
So the volunteer caregiving in this country, the whole country alone--it's a very rich country--saves the health care system $5 billion every year. We have to have some recompense for these people who are doing these things. I think we could save an awful lot of money, not just the $5 billion, by paying some of these people or giving them the care, setting up some method of making sure this woman in your constituency has the proper child care, that she has the proper care when she is recuperating so that she can go back to work as an able-bodied person and look after her own affairs.
Something that seems to be ignored is the actual cause. If we get at the causes, we can eliminate a lot of the problems. We won't eliminate them all, but we can do it.
We have such a wealth of talent in this country that I'm just surprised that people seem to balk at doing something about caring for their neighbour. You know, at one time this country was full of that. I grew up on the Prairies, and that was an automatic thing that you did. If your neighbour was in trouble, then by golly, you were down there, helping in whatever way you could, whether it was a casserole or looking after the kids. Well, that should be expanded to make sure nobody in this country has a need like that.
I don't know. I just bang my head against the wall every time. I'm sorry about that.